An Unseen Constellation of Freckles
by Queen of the Castle
Summary: There was one room on the TARDIS that Rose Tyler was never allowed to enter. Nine/Rose


Warnings: Contains sexual content and somewhat darkish content.

Author's Notes: Written for who_contest one-shot challenge #6: Never Look Back. I make no apologies for this, and yet. My god. Where is my brain at lately?

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><p>From the moment he'd met Rose Tyler, he'd somehow known every inch of her body.<p>

He ran his eyes down the length her body. It was perfunctory, rather than the long kind of salacious visual caress that would have tipped her off even then – even before _he_ knew – that she should be running in the opposite direction instead of by his side. Yet the overly casual eye with which he catalogued her features in no way limited the scope of what he managed to discern. He noted every tiny curve, the weak arch of her left foot, the scar on her knee that he could _feel_ the presence of as clearly as if there wasn't a thick denim cover obscuring it from his sight, a slight rough patch marring the otherwise smooth skin of her similarly covered lower back, _everything_...

He had no idea what it was that made him so hyperaware of this particular human girl, singling her out from other countless beings he'd met in nine hundred years across multiple galaxies and time frames. He couldn't deny, though, that he was incredibly intrigued to find out.

It was soon after she came with him that he began to realise that closer contact with her did nothing to solve the mystery. Instead, it made him regret asking in the first place (and twice, at that). It would have been better if she'd never met him, let alone agreed to travel with him, even if he could no longer bear the thought of her not being there.

He tried to stop himself from dwelling on thoughts of her. Of course he did. He didn't like to think himself as the kind of monster who would prey on someone like her, no matter what unfavourable names the universe had bestowed on him. But in the end, he was never quite strong enough to turn away, or to turn _her _away as he knew he should.

He watched her every moment when she was nearby, often furtively when she could have no idea of his regard. He already knew the details well enough to create a flawless copy of her in his mind, and yet he still constantly studied her and drank in the sense of her very real closeness as if each time was the first he'd ever seen her.

No matter how much he thrived on it, though, escaping her physical presence wasn't enough to get away. The sharp memory of her was too complete... too perfect... it was nearly worse when he was _out _of her presence, strangely, if only because he was no longer restrained by having to carefully hide it all away from her.

So many times he found himself slinking into the dark oppression of a bedroom he never used for anything except this; these debasing moments of necessary privacy that he wished he didn't need to indulge in so very badly. Only in that room did he let himself dream of his tongue mapping a constellation among a cluster of freckles at the top of her thigh. Like so many aspects of her, he'd still never even seen those tiny marks with his own eyes. He knew for sure that they weren't merely imagined, though, just as he was beyond certain of the exact way she'd shudder as he laved attention on them, not seeming to realise that she shouldn't be letting him touch her at all, anywhere, especially there, so close. She would run her fingers over his shorn hair with a throaty moan and allow him to wholly feast yet another sense on her, his tongue running higher, deeper, over every inch...

His grunts were thankfully muffled, but there was evidence of his weakness less transitory than some carrying sound. He gasped for breath, thoroughly ashamed. Rose, like the sheets, seemed soiled by his actions.

He was sure he'd never touch her, taste her, love her that way outside his own fevered imagination, but it made little difference. It wasn't just some abstract fantasy of a stranger, which would have been a flaw all too human for comfort, but still something he might have come to terms with (for he was well aware that he'd long since failed at being any kind of proper Time Lord). No, this was so much worse. He _knew _her as clearly as if he'd spent all nine lives thus far studying her. The clarity of his fantasy was so vivid that in many ways the real Rose Tyler might as well have been right there in the room with him. Yet she had no idea about any of it; just one of the many reasons why he had no right.

He felt sick, even as some animalistic part of him was already desperate for a repeat performance.

She could never know.

He couldn't bear it.

He pulled the bedroom door shut so firmly behind him that the slam resounded. He glared at the offending door as he locked it as if it could in any way share in his blame. He hoped that this time the closing of the door might be truly symbolic, and that he would never enter that room again.

He knew better than that, though. That hope was hardly a new one, but he'd never managed to keep himself away yet.

Knowing that – knowing his own shortfalls as only a man with the Doctor's aptitude for scornful self-reflection could – the very least he could do was attempt to leave the worst of his transgressions buried in the shadows of that room, where Rose need never be made aware of them. That way he could at least pretend that it was something that was completely in his past, never to be revisited or thought of again, instead of something constantly lurking.

He found Rose in the console room and reached for her hand, forcing himself not to recall where exactly his own had just been.

He smiled at her as if nothing was wrong, despite the quickened beating of his hearts.

As usual, she didn't suspect a thing.

~FIN~


End file.
